Straub/Huillet—Brecht—Benjamin—Adorno

Plays and Fragments: Antigone, Film, Modernity

“…In this context, his choice of Hölderlin's translation of the Antigone was consistent with that concept of theatre: 'long derided as the crazed work of a poet sliding into madness, Hölderlin's is one of the most radical German translations of the play in existence, with its paratactic structure, the attempt to match the syntax as closely as possible to the original Greek, and the introduction of numerous Swabian regional idioms and inflections.' 34 No doubt, Brecht's Swabian upbringing (as much as the broken lines and strange imagery) also attracted him to Hölderlin's poetic language, something that must have sounded both peculiar and yet familiar to his ear; although it also worth bearing in mind he significantly revised or completely excised nearly 50% of Hölderlin's text. 35 The salient issue, however, and the one that also interested Fassbinder-and would not have gone unnoticed a decade earlier by Hochhuth and Malina, or Dieterle for that matter-concerns the relationship between German nationalism and the idealisation of Greek tragedy or, as in this particular case, the Third Reich's celebration of Hölderlin's 'patriotism' and notion of a near-mystical 'Germania' directly descended from classical Greece, a kindred heroic civilisation enshrining the values of das Vaterländische.…”